Olive Films to Release Leo McCarey's The Bells of St. Mary's

Posted September 13, 2013 10:57 PM by Webmaster

Olive Films have revealed that they are planning to bring to Blu-ray Leo McCarey's The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), starring Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, and Henry Travers. The release will be available for purchase in November.

Witty, heartwarming and utterly charming, The Bells of Saint Mary's delivers all the entertainment of its predecessor, the Academy Award-winning Best Picture (1944), Going My Way.

Bing Crosby recreates his Oscar-winning (Best Actor) role as parish priest Father O'Malley, who is sent to revive the financially ailing parochial school. The easy-going O'Malley is immediately at odds with no-nonsense Sister Benedict (Ingrid Bergman in a Golden Globe-winning performance) on how to educate children. Beyond their delightful battle of wits lies a bigger problem. The skinflint businessman next door (Henry Travers, It's A Wonderful Life) wants St. Mary's condemned. Only a miracle can save it now. How a devilish situation finds a heavenly solution remains to be seen in this captivating family classic that was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress.

@mspar009: Titles yes but PQ/AQ ? No. I have to agree with musicfann. Olive does not have the resources needed to restore their releases to true blue ray quality. The intent of BD is to release films/movies/videos in beautiful high definition not just to release them. If all you want is the latter then standard DVD is usually good enough. By putting out less than stellar versions of classic and catalogue films they reduce the possibility that the major studios will ever get around to producing a fully restored version of that title.

Let's see:
The Quiet Man: PQ-5.0/AQ-4.0 here. I won't argue with those numbers.
McLintock!: PQ-4.5/AQ-4.0 here. I haven't gotten to yet.
Father Goose: PQ-4.0/AQ-4.0 here. Another I haven't viewed yet.
I'm not saying all their releases are perfect, however, much of the HD material is licensed from the main studios, so who is to blame? If the studios provide the BR content, Olive is a distributor.
And then then is the almost "bare bones" nature of the releases. At LEAST you get a menu, which is better than some of the Starz /Anchor Bay titles.
And if you complain too loudly, the studios will just give the titles to Twilight Time. Then the real complaining can begin!

@Arkadin: That wouldn't keep Universal from licensing Going My Way to someone like Olive, if not releasing it on its own. It appears The Bells of St. Mary's ended up with Paramount via the NTA/Republic library; that's where Olive got its rights from. (It's ironic that Paramount, the original studio of Going My Way -- it went to Universal via EMKA -- ended up with its sequel.)

Edit: And at least Olive is a better option than Twilight Time; I'm almost certainly gonna import Oliver! rather than claim one of TT's 3,000 copies.

Once again, I get excited about a classic title being released only to have those hopes evaporate when the realization sets in that it's Olive Films. No subtitles, No deal. How long is it going to take Olive to recognize the fact that there are quite a few people in the U.S. (and the rest of the world, for that matter) that are hearing impaired? While it probably is expensive to provide 6 or 7 subtitle tracks, an English only track shouldn't add that much cost. If it did, I for one wouldn't mind having to pay $1 or $2 more to cover the expense.